Irving "Moon" Mondschein (February 7, 1924 – June 5, 2015) was an American track and field athlete and football player.[1][2]
Mondschein, who was Jewish, was born in Brooklyn, New York.[1][3][4] He attended Boys High School, where he ran track.[5] He also ran for the New York Pioneer Club.[1][6] He entered the US Army in 1943.[7] He became a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternal organization while attending New York University[8] His son, Brian, was a world-class decathlete in the 1980s.[7] His grandson, also named Brian, was an All-American pole vaulter at Virginia Tech.[9]
He was AAU decathlon champion in 1944, and in 1946 and 1947.[1][10] He won the 1944 Olympic Trials and would have been the top American representative had the Olympic Games been held that year.[11] He was NCAA high jump champion in both 1947 and 1948, competing for New York University.[1][4][10] As of 2015, he still held NYU's record in the outdoor high jump—6 feet, 7¾ inches.[9] He also played football as an end for NYU in 1946, earning All-East honors.[7][10][12] He competed in the 1948 Olympics for the United States in decathlon, coming in eighth, as teammate Bob Mathias won the gold medal.[1] In his career, he was ranked third in the world in outdoor high jump and tenth in the decathlon in 1947; sixth in the indoor high jump and eighth in the decathlon in 1948; and third in the outdoor high jump and sixth in the decathlon in 1949.[13]
He later coached track, basketball, and football at Lincoln UniversityinOxford, Pennsylvania, starting in 1949.[1][14] He coached the US track and field team at the 1950 Maccabiah Games, which included Olympian Henry Laskau (national champion and world record holder) who won a gold medal in racewalking, and was also an advisor to the Israeli Ministry of Education, helping for two years to prepare the country's athletes for the 1952 Olympics.[15] [1][7] Irv was also athletic coach (Track) at Lawrence High School, Cedarhurst, NY ( Nassau County) from 1956-65. He was then a coach at the University of Pennsylvania; first the assistant track coach (1965–79) and then the head coach (1979–87).[7] He was also an assistant coach on the 1988 U.S. Olympic team.[12] He was previously an assistant coach at Kutztown University,[7] and also volunteered as an assistant coach at Haverford College. He also served as an assistant coach at La Salle UniversityinPhiladelphia.[16]
He is a member of the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, the New York Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, and the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.[12][17][18] He is also a member of the NYU Athletics Hall of Fame, and the U.S. Track & Field and Cross-Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame.[9][19]
| Year | Team | Overall | Conference | Standing | Bowl/playoffs | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lincoln Lions (Colored Intercollegiate Athletic Association) (1949–1950) | |||||||||
| 1949 | Lincoln | 3–5 | 2–4 | 13th | |||||
| 1950 | Lincoln | 3–3–1 | 2–3–1 | 9th | |||||
| Lincoln: | 6–8–1 | 4–7–1 | |||||||
| Total: | 6–8–1 | ||||||||
Irving Mondschein.
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US National Championship winners in men's decathlon
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| 1915–1979 Amateur Athletic Union |
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| 1980–1992 The Athletics Congress |
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| 1993-onwards USA Track & Field |
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| Notes |
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